


pacifist's sword

by spiritphones



Series: mangling canon for fun and profit [2]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Autistic Duck Newton, Gen, Pre-Canon, Trans Duck Newton
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-03
Updated: 2019-10-03
Packaged: 2020-11-22 12:47:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20874446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spiritphones/pseuds/spiritphones
Summary: Duck, as he was.





	pacifist's sword

**Author's Note:**

> spoilers for as late as the tree arc in passing
> 
> warnings:  
talk about death/violence/etc. in the same amounts as canon, non-graphic as a description of duck's reluctance to commit violent acts

“I don’t want to kill,” he tells Minerva.

“I don’t want to fight,” he says to Mama.

“I don’t want to do this,” he says to his own blade.

His name is Duck, and nobody has ever listened to what he wanted unless he made them.

He has spent his whole life going in and out of the Monongahela. The forest is his sun that he orbits. This was true for lots of folks in Kepler, but especially for Duck, because he loves the forest.

Duck thinks maybe the forest must love him too.

Spending so much time there, he gets older. He nurtures baby birds, and then nurtures his baby sister, and then the birds’ children’s children help Janie learn their names by sitting patiently while he holds her up on his shoulders. The forest gives and takes, and Duck for years cannot imagine being cruel. It’s not in the forest’s nature, and it’s not in his.

A woman with no face tells him he has to fight, and he does not want to. Later he will tell it like he was fighting his destiny, and maybe he’ll even believe it, but right then he is eighteen and he does not want to hurt anyone or anything, not even the monsters under the bed. 

He does not want to hurt anyone. He says this in plain words, spread bare and honest for Minerva to misunderstand as fear. And yeah okay, he is pretty fuckin’ scared, but that’s not what he’s saying. He’s not at the point where he understands that people might not take his words at face value like he presents them, where he might know that Minerva sees his words like they mean more than they are. Where Minerva might understand that he has always been blunt and plain with his language and his face and his interests.

And in the face of his destiny, Duck turns his head from the sun to nourish the dirt. 

Destiny finds him, of course. It finds him with top surgery scars and an autism diagnosis. It finds him in his own forest, in a gate, in the lodge. 

It finds him in the form of a kid Jane’s age, all spark and flash-paper.

This time, he takes the thought of it all, and turns it over in his hands enough to wear at it like a smooth river stone. He is older and now he knows when words have double meanings, and he knows when the forest takes and when it gives, and he knows the sound of that old blues song. He lets himself think about it. The idea of fighting this fight is an idea he forces himself to take down from the shelf he’s placed it on to hold and consider, like Beacon in his hands.

Duck is blunt, and plain, and scared. He has a little sister, and a sword, and a whole group of people that need him. 

Destiny finds him tired and a pacifist, and more than a little disgruntled at his whole situation, but it finds him the same as he’s always been: a little too honest, a little too caring. 

At some point, he’ll think about it again. He’ll perform fun surprise surgery on a goat man and listen to Minerva talk about committing fuckin’ genocide or some shit, and he’ll take his thoughts out to mull over again. Maybe let himself feel real human emotions about how fucked up it all is.

At some point, it’ll all be over.

The him of the present, facing destiny, does not think about that. Can’t conceptualize that. 

But when destiny finds present-tense Duck, it finds him with sword raised.

**Author's Note:**

> not as long as the first and not in the same time frame by any means, but before i write more about mid-canon and post-canon duck i wanted to try and let myself figure out pre-canon duck's thought process
> 
> basically all stilted pretentious language in this one, sorry. giving yall this one while i try and work on a bigger one that comes next


End file.
